Storm Gertrude, Inside and Outside

We’re planning to depart this afternoon for a weekend in Edinburgh with our students. I planned to pick the kids up from their schools at 2:00 pm so we could leave for the train station, but they managed to convince me that it would be easier for them to just walk home at lunch. I had prepared notes for their school requesting an early dismissal. However, we had a bit of a rough night here, caused partly from a middle-of-the-night fit by Leah. She hasn’t been sleeping well at all here, and since she’s sharing a room with John, he is suffering. In fact, David and I are wakened most nights not by Leah’s crying, but by John’s bellowing, “LEAH! CUT IT OUT!” She’s not sleeping in a crib here, so that’s part of the problem, but she’s also still having a tough time adjusting. Yesterday I was trying to talk up this train ride to Edinburgh and she said, “Uh, I’d rather take the plane. Can we get back on that plane?” I said, “Well, the train is going to look just like the plane on the inside,” and she responded, “Well, will it take us to our house? Not to this house, but to OUR house?”

Aside from Leah, we were all kept awake by storm “Gertrude,” which is blowing across the UK today. It’s featuring some seriously gusty winds, and for some reason there’s a dryer pipe right in the middle of our house that crashes in the walls anytime the wind blows even a tiny bit. So, overnight, it sounded as if a squirrel was stuck inside the pipe, thrashing all about, and none of us could get any sleep. David was especially perturbed about this, and he woke up this morning vowing to wage war against that pipe. I’m not sure what his plan is, since our house has such a bizarre construction that we can’t even see any of the roof, let alone figure out where the pipe might be and try to get to it. In any case, everyone “woke up” on the wrong side of the bed, and so I told the kids that they didn’t have to go to school at all and could try to get some more sleep this morning instead. They agreed to log on to their school website in the US and download some work that they have missed since we have been gone, and I think that’s probably a better option than a half-day of school here at this point.

The Forth Rail Bridge

As I checked the news sites this morning, I started to realize that this storm might cause our group some travel delays. It seems that the bridge that takes cars from St. Andrews to Edinburgh (the “Firth of Forth” bridge…say that five times fast, and in a Scottish accent!) is closed this morning because of high winds. We will actually be crossing the Forth Rail Bridge next to it instead of the road bridge, but I’m still watching closely to see if our train gets delayed or cancelled.